inhale ash, exhale stars
by all the lost souls
Summary: au. "and he wonders how she can be smiling when inside his chest, his heart is chiseling into cinders, the broken shards scraping at his insides, their jagged edges leaving perfectly asymmetrical scars as he bleeds himself to death inside-out."


-an. thank you to lisa for beta-ing. also dedicated to leesh, hannah, dez, syd, ericka—for _FLCA_, which i will go read now—, dani, and why oh you, reader, for bothering to click on this (:

disclaimed.

* * *

**inhale ash, exhale stars.**

**.**

_What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen. ~Cynthia Ozick_

.

,

The last thing a girl wants is to wake up at two in the morning and glance outside the window to see her boyfriend kissing someone else across the street.

"Kristen, _wait_!"

She sped up. Her bare feet bounce off the grass, the morning dew embedding itself between her toes, the electric blue nail polish that matched her eyes shining in the moonlight. His fingers caught her arm, their touch cold on her skin, goosebumps dancing on her arms, her legs, her ratty gray t-shirt and pyjama shorts doing nothing to shield her against the cold autumn night.

She spun around, her fury hurtling out of her like silver-tipped bullets, blinking back the tears pooling under her lashes.

"What the _hell _do you want, Fisher?" She spat.

He let go of her wrists, his arms falling back to his sides. Anger bubbled in her throat, and she wiped away another tear before it had a chance to fall. He wants to reach out and wipe it away with his thumb, then kiss her on the cheek softly, but he keeps his arms locked by his side.

There was a long silence. Years passed before he spoke again.

"It hurts. You_ know_ I can't do it anymore."

Her anger fades a little, because she _does_ know. The miserable line of his mouth would have broken her heart if she hadn't been so pissed off at him. She looked back at him, huddled there so miserable and regretful, and stared down at the ever-widening space between them. She had had enough of his twisted logic, and her own stupidity for opening up again every time and letting him in, only to get hurt all over again. His eyes held her, begging her to change her mind, pleading for forgiveness.

She shook her head again.

"I love you, so much that it hurts." He folded his arms behind his head, lacing his fingers into his hair, frustration marring his handsome face. "It _hurts_, Kris."

She doesn't say anything.

The seconds morph into minutes which morph into hours which morph into decades as the silence rings heavy between them, the weight of words left unspoken hanging in the air.

When one of them finally spoke again, his voice was dead, barely a whisper.

"I really screwed up, didn't I?"

_Yes, you did, _she though, before she turned around and disappeared into the trees.

::

All those split-second glances they'd shared, those simple but meaningful days filled with long, warm hugs, whispered secrets, laughing at song lyrics they could relate to, usually ending with her curled up against his chest, asleep, his arms wrapping around her thin frame automatically as he places a gentle kiss on her forehead.

They were just memories now.

::

His bare arms were marred with cuts. They were his only outlet, a horrible type of release. They were the kind of cuts that danced with suicide.

(He was just some fucked-up kid living in some crazy-ass world and he had had the most fucked up upbringing ever. He made Eminem look like a fucking choir boy, adored to the precipice of burlesque exaltation. Could you really blame him for not knowing any better?)

::

He'd promised, with that smile plastered onto his face, that he'd always be her hero, and she's always be his heroine.

When he'd broken that promise, she'd stopped chasing after stardust, and given up on keeping the moon.

::

Cam Fisher sat on the wall, flecks of white paint peeling off to reveal the ugly gray cement underneath, his back pressed against the battered metal fence, a cigarette dangling from his lips. His skateboard was propped up against his feet, a Coke balanced on its scratched surface.

The frost culminated on his eyelashes until he blinked it away, and he lost track of time as he stared down at the locket in his hands, his fingers running over the frayed silver edges after years of wear. The metal was cold against his fingers. The locket was shaped like a dove, its wings flecked with crystals, it's tail dipping downwards, a slight cavity bending it down at a crooked angle. It's surface was cracked and dented a million times over.

She had _loved_ it.

::

("I don't know why." She shrugged, blinking the same way she always did when she was confused. "I guess...it's because it's beautiful, but not everyone can see that. And it's old, and that makes me think about all the memories tied to it. It's like holding a piece of history in between your fingertips, you know? All the love stories, the heartbreaks, the emotions and everything, well, it reminds me that even though technology and architecture and everything else changes, people don't. Remember that Stephen King quote about the monsters being real, and them being inside of us?" She stops to bite her lip, and because she mentions it, he _remembers._ "We're still fighting those monsters, Cam.")

::

He torments himself by thinking about her, going back to the first day he saw her.

He'd shown up at her house with Josh because Josh had been going out with Dylan at the time, and the sickly-sweet couple couldn't stand two minutes without being within a ten-centimetre radius of each other. He'd been scrolling through the songs on his iTouch when there had been a shuffle against the wooden floor and then the door had swung open,

He shivers, partly because of the warmth contrasting with the chill on the porch, but mostly because she was standing there.

She looked like an angel. Her hair was damp from a shower, a couple of shades darker than usual, and she was slightly breathless, dressed in a fern-green sweater pulled on hastily over some light-wash jeans. Behind her, the TV was playing some reality show, the volume on mute, and the smell of cookies wafted from the kitchen. But he was captivated by her ice-flecked azure eyes.

Dylan bounded down the stairs, throwing her arms around Josh, and after about five minutes of sickly lovey-doveyness and kissing and teasing, Josh had introduced them. Her expression changed as her eyes raked over him, a smile leaking onto her face as her fingers clasped around the pendant hanging from her neck.

"Hi." She said softly.

He'd smiled back.

And that's when he started falling into the abyss of the rabbit hole he'd stay in forever, no matter how hard he tried to pull himself out.

(He was in too deep.)

::

He remembers the day she'd thrown that necklace at him, tears entrapped in her lashes, blackened mascara leaving tracks down her pretty face as she cried, azure-tinted anger flashing in those almond-shaped orbs, yelling profanities at him, calling him out as an _asshole_ and _mother fucking bastard_.

He doesn't know how she still managed to look adorable while doing it.

She was so _innocent._

::

The small trinket spins around in a circle, the moonlight catching on the edges, glitter freezing as its reflection sends thin rays of lights splaying across his lap, and his heart clenches.

He'd given her up.

He hadn't chased after her.

He'd _lost_ her.

It was his fault she was missing.

If he hadn't cheated on her with Claire fucking Lyons and she hadn't caught the two of them at it, she never would've run away.

Her face wouldn't be plastered all over the local news, the blonde-haired girl with the impish grin and the tainted eyes staring down at him wherever he went, taunting him, accusing him of every worst sin he'd ever committed.

And because he was a masochistic asshole, Cam Fisher mentally listed all the things Kristen Gregory did that made him mad and angry and sad all together, the things he both loved and hated, the things that infuriated him and he found endearing at the same time, making his mind a jumbled mess of emotions and thoughts and bitter-sweet memories and _her._

::

The simple truth was that he missed her.

He missed when she yelled at him, because she _cared._ He missed when she cried, and the pain it brought him to watch the tears stream down her cheeks, because she was _frustrated_. He missed when she kissed him out if the blue, just because she _wanted_ to, or missed she walked with him, because she wanted to _hold his hand_. He missed when she sat close to him to lean her head against his shoulder, or when she stood in front of him, because she wanted a _hug_.

He missed when she hit him just because she wanted to _touch_ him, or stared at him because she was _infatuated._ He even missed how she called every half hour, just because _she_ missed _him_, and she wanted to know where he was to be with him, or maybe because she just wanted to hear his voice.

Cameron Riley Fisher _missed _Kristen Gregory.

And it fucking hurt, almost as much as loving her did.

::

He missed the way she lectured him, because she was _boss_, not _mom_. Or the constant flow of questions that never ceased to leave her lips, lingering unasked or voiced aloud, because she was _curious_, not she wanted to be _annoying_. The way she bit her lip and her eyebrows would slant when she was confused, or that glint she'd get in those beautiful cerulean-hued eyes—the same eyes that made her _different—_whenever she got a flash of inspiration, or figured out the answer to one of those stupid crossword puzzles she was so fond of.

Or even the way that smile would randomly sneak onto her face, because she's _thinking of him_, even if he's _already there_. and she'd be lost in heaven for a while. And now she was just _lost_ and he was still stuck on the cloud of unknowing, with his misery as company and a mountain of guilt to lug around.

She was gone.

::

"I loved her." Cam says, his eyes lowered to his hands, the breeze ruffling his hair.

Plovert takes a drag from his cigarette, throwing his friend a sympathetic look, then puts it out with his foot and flicks it into the plastic green bin.

"I know."

::

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. The days crawled by, his regret eating away at him, guilt twisting him inside out.

(She was in _love_ with him.)

But Cam Fisher didn't know that.

He didn't know that until he was too late.

And now she was gone, slipping through his fingers like threads of liquid gold, leaving him empty-handed and lost at sea somewhere, broken-hearted, not even bothering to leave a map or a compass so he could at least try to beat the odds and find his way back.

::

"It's going to be one hell of a storm," Josh says on a Friday afternoon, squinting up at the sky.

Cam doesn't care. His life had been a freaking storm ever since that night she had left him.

As this realisation hits him, the thoughts threaten to leak through the carefully architectured wall he had built around him, snippets of memories and bittersweet feelings slipping through the cracks, slitting open his wounds with a fresh flow of saltwater and serving them up on a plate of squalid indigence.

He reaches to turn the radio up, some old Guns 'N Roses song hitting it's final notes.

Then his heart stops.

"—latest news, sixteen-year-old Kristen Gregory is currently recovering in hospital after being found last night at—"

Cam's breath catches in his throat, and his pupils dilate in a mixture of joy and disbelief.

His heart threatens to break out of his chest.

They had _found_ her.

::

She had been hit by a car while walking home.

She was unconscious for two days.

(Forty-eight hours. Two thousand, eight hundred and eighty minutes. One hundred seventy two thousand and eight hundred million three hundred sixty eight thousand seconds.)

She had two broken ribs and a concussion.

They said she was lucky.

She cried out in pain as their fingers poked at her scars and bruises, trying to fix her broken bones, avoiding the collection of clear tubes and multi-coloured wires carrying fluids they'd promised would _help_ her, standing out against her pale skin, making her look like a human pincushion.

_It was his fucking fault._

::

Kristen sat on the roof, her tanned legs dangling over the edge as she studied the Polaroids pinched between her fingers.

There was one of her and Dylan and Dylan's boyfriend, whose name she couldn't remember, and another dark-haired boy at Lake Placid. She was wearing a Tomahawks shirt over her emerald-hued bikini with_ Fisher 11_ plastered on it in green font, and the boy's arm was around her. They were grinning at the camera, an ice-cream stain on his cheek, their hands were intertwined in between them.

Strong feelings stirred up inside of her, and a memory of that blue-green eyed boy crushing her against his warm chest pivoted to the surface of her mind before plunging back into its enigmatic depths again.

She couldn't remember.

So she let it go.  
::

The wind races through his hair as he runs, his shoes crunching against the gravel, his heart pounding rhythmically, then speeding up as his dark thoughts catch up with him.

He doesn't know what he's running from.

He just wants to get away.

It _hurts._

::

She doesn't _remember_ him.

"Temporary amnesia," they said.

He didn't think she ever would. And if she did, she'd run.

And he would let her go, because it was too late, and he wasn't going to hurt her anymore.

::

She's sitting in the crook of a tree, her back pressed against the trunk she was leaning on, the rough edges of the bark scraping through her shirt ever so slightly. The wind whistled past her limbs, ruffling her hair.

Her ice-flecked eyes widen by the slightest fraction, taking in the rich golds and dull blues of twilight, with the dark shadows of the shapes of the spectral trees flitting as the wind interwining itself between the hollow branches. Fireflies glowed against the dark quilt encasing her, but her view is obscured when a boy steps in front of her.

His sandy blonde hair and too-white teeth outshines the moonlight, and his hands are stuffed in his blazer's pockets, his expression sheepish. She looks surprised, but regains her composure within a second, brightening. A few sentences are exchanged; he doesn't listen hard enough to hear the exact words.

The boy runs a hand through his unkempt blonde hair, and he smiles, the smile curving his lips, embedding a dimple in his cheek.

For a second she doesn't react, just a tiny flicker of surprise across her face. Then her hesitation disappears and is replaced by a numb determination, her eyes flashing with some emotion that passes too quickly to be recognized.

And slowly, she smiles back.

::

He stands in the shadows, crouched behind a rose bush, the thorns digging through his jeans nothing compared to the hurt in his chest. His skin crawls and his blood runs hot with adrenaline, but he tries to ignore that. He clenches his fists, his nails biting into his knuckles. There are a thousand different permutations for what he could do right now.

He could tackle the asshole and beaten him up.

He could beg for her forgiveness, grovel on his knees until she took him back.

But he doesn't.

Because he knows he is beyond forgiveness at this point.

So he just sits there. Watching.

And he wonders how she can be smiling when inside his chest, his heart is crumbling to pieces, the broken shards scraping at his insides, their jagged edges leaving perfectly asymmetrical scars as he bleeds himself to death inside-out.

_It's his fucking fault._

_::_

* * *

fin.

* * *

**-so, this was pretty twisted. and if it actually made any sense to anyone out there, well, i'll be damned. i need a couple of decades of therapy. but i'm tired and uninspired and this is the best I could muster right now. hope you don't kill yourself ridiculing it. **

**concrit/flame? i'm up for a little negativity right now.**


End file.
